And as I listened my brain began to work.The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me.I saw the picture of the Social Pit as vividly as though it were a concrete thing, and at the bottom of the Pit I saw them, myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat.And Iconfess a terror seized me.What when my strength failed? when Ishould be unable to work shoulder to shoulder with the strong men who were as yet babes unborn? And there and then I swore a great oath.It ran something like this: ALL MY DAYS I HAVE WORKED HARDWITH MY BODY, AND ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF DAYS I HAVE WORKED, BYJUST THAT MUCH AM I NEARER THE BOTTOM OF THE PIT.I SHALL CLIMB OUTOF THE PIT, BUT NOT BY THE MUSCLES OF MY BODY SHALL I CLIMB OUT.ISHALL DO NO MORE HARD WORK, AND MAY GOD STRIKE ME DEAD IF I DOANOTHER DAY'S HARD WORK WITH MY BODY MORE THAN I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TODO.And I have been busy ever since running away from hard work.
Incidentally, while tramping some ten thousand miles through the United States and Canada, I strayed into Niagara Falls, was nabbed by a fee-hunting constable, denied the right to plead guilty or not guilty, sentenced out of hand to thirty days' imprisonment for having no fixed abode and no visible means of support, handcuffed and chained to a bunch of men similarly circumstanced, carted down country to Buffalo, registered at the Erie County Penitentiary, had my head clipped and my budding mustache shaved, was dressed in convict stripes, compulsorily vaccinated by a medical student who practised on such as we, made to march the lock-step, and put to work under the eyes of guards armed with Winchester rifles--all for adventuring in BLOND-BEASTLY fashion.Concerning further details deponent sayeth not, though he may hint that some of his plethoric national patriotism simmered down and leaked out of the bottom of his soul somewhere--at least, since that experience he finds that he cares more for men and women and little children than for imaginary geographical lines.
To return to my conversion.I think it is apparent that my rampant individualism was pretty effectively hammered out of me, and something else as effectively hammered in.But, just as I had been an individualist without knowing it, I was now a Socialist without knowing it, withal, an unscientific one.I had been reborn, but not renamed, and I was running around to find out what manner of thing Iwas.I ran back to California and opened the books.I do not remember which ones I opened first.It is an unimportant detail anyway.I was already It, whatever It was, and by aid of the books I discovered that It was a Socialist.Since that day I have opened many books, but no economic argument, no lucid demonstration of the logic and inevitableness of Socialism affects me as profoundly and convincingly as I was affected on the day when I first saw the walls of the Social Pit rise around me and felt myself slipping down, down, into the shambles at the bottom.
Footnotes:
{1} "From 43 to 52 per cent of all applicants need work rather than relief."--Report of the Charity Organization Society of New York City.
{2} Mr.Leiter, who owns a coal mine at the town of Zeigler, Illinois, in an interview printed in the Chicago Record-Herald of December 6, 1904, said: "When I go into the market to purchase labor, I propose to retain just as much freedom as does a purchaser in any other kind of a market....There is no difficulty whatever in obtaining labor, FOR THE COUNTRY IS FULL OF UNEMPLOYED MEN."{3} "Despondent and weary with vain attempts to struggle against an unsympathetic world, two old men were brought before Police Judge McHugh this afternoon to see whether some means could not be provided for their support, at least until springtime.
"George Westlake was the first one to receive the consideration of the court.Westlake is seventy-two years old.A charge of habitual drunkenness was placed against him, and he was sentenced to a term in the county jail, though it is more than probable that he was never under the influence of intoxicating liquor in his life.The act on the part of the authorities was one of kindness for him, as in the county jail he will be provided with a good place to sleep and plenty to eat.
"Joe Coat, aged sixty-nine years, will serve ninety days in the county jail for much the same reason as Westlake.He states that, if given a chance to do so, he will go out to a wood-camp and cut timber during the winter, but the police authorities realize that he could not long survive such a task."--From the Butte (Montana)Miner, December 7th, 1904.
"'I end my life because I have reached the age limit, and there is no place for me in this world.Please notify my wife, No.222 West 129th Street, New York.' Having summed up the cause of his despondency in this final message, James Hollander, fifty-six years old, shot himself through the left temple, in his room at the Stafford Hotel today."--New York Herald.
{4} In the San Francisco Examiner of November 16, 1904, there is an account of the use of fire-hose to drive away three hundred men who wanted work at unloading a vessel in the harbor.So anxious were the men to get the two or three hours' job that they made a veritable mob and had to be driven off.
{5} "It was no uncommon thing in these sweatshops for men to sit bent over a sewing-machine continuously from eleven to fifteen hours a day in July weather, operating a sewing-machine by foot-power, and often so driven that they could not stop for lunch.The seasonal character of the work meant demoralizing toil for a few months in the year, and a not less demoralizing idleness for the remainder of the time.Consumption, the plague of the tenements and the especial plague of the garment industry, carried off many of these workers;poor nutrition and exhaustion, many more."--From McClure's Magazine.
{6} The Social Unrest.Macmillan Company.
{7} "Our Benevolent Feudalism." By W.J.Ghent.The Macmillan Company.
{8} "The Social Unrest." By John Graham Brooks.The Macmillan Company.
{9} From figures presented by Miss Nellie Mason Auten in the American Journal of Sociology, and copied extensively by the trade-union and Socialist press.
{10} "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London."{11} An item from the Social Democratic Herald.Hundreds of these items, culled from current happenings, are published weekly in the papers of the workers.
{12} Karl Marx, the great Socialist, worked out the trust development forty years ago, for which he was laughed at by the orthodox economists.
End